The 'Normie' Bubble

The headline in the Washington Examiner sounds encouraging enough: "The MAGA bubble is about to burst."

It's about time! anyone not inside said bubble will doubtless think.

Intrigued, and having doubts, I read the piece. My summary verdict is that it made lots of interesting observations, but that the headline would have been more accurate with ... for now appended.

The author, Peter Laffin, makes lots of interesting comparisons between MAGA and the "Democrats" (really, the woke left, who control that party as MAGA controls the GOP), and concludes that they are both "bubbles" that look outlandish to "normal people." For example:

The woke-era Democratic bubble proved remarkably durable, surviving one reality check after another for over a decade: Brexit, Donald Trump’s 2016 win, the backlash to “defund the police,” COVID restrictions, the parent revolt against indoctrination, to name a few.

2024 punctured it. Trump’s comeback from the depths of Jan. 6 to the heights of a popular vote victory couldn’t be spun or explained away. Democrats had to face it.

As they searched their souls, Trump stormed into Washington and had his way with it. And it didn’t take him long to alienate the voters who had just handed him a mandate to clean up the Democrats’ mess. Chaotic ICE raids, whiplash tariffs, a ballroom funded by companies with business before the government, a military parade on his birthday, a $400 million gift jet from Qatar, pardons for the Jan. 6 rioters: the list of self-inflicted wounds goes on. [bold added]

An important piece of context worth remembering here is that Joe Biden was elected in the first place under the disingenuous promise (by his party)/actual mandate (from the electorate) of piloting a return to normalcy after Trump's lunatic first term.

We all know what happened there, and we should remember that.

Laffin further elaborates on what his idea of a bubble means and what will likely happen next:

Just as Democrats lost sight of how off-putting they became through land acknowledgments, talk of “birthing people,” and the use of “Latinx,” Republicans are now blind to how their own behavior appears outside the bubble. Inside it, their excesses play like strength and clarity of purpose. Outside it, the same behavior looks unhinged.

Among the more recent displays of embubblement: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s short-lived plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan. This attempted resurrection of the grisly ritual — the last public execution in the United States came in 1936 — thrilled the hardcore theocon and NatCon factions of the Right, who, for reasons ranging from biblical notions of retributive justice to the conviction that a strong state must be seen wielding its power, thought a livestreamed killing was just what America needed in this, the year of our Lord 2026. The plan enjoyed spirited defenses in highly visible conservative spaces, from the erudite heights of the First Things podcast (though they eventually agreed Trump was right to cancel it) to the seedy depths of Jack Posobiec’s social media feed. [bold added]

I have been waiting for a prominent conservative outlet to note the similarity. It is progress that people are beginning to notice how similar MAGA and the woke left are, beyond the facile and lacking urge to invoke "horseshoe theory" and call it a day.

Unfortunately, it's still early days, and the extent of the bubble bursting is only going to entail the current "embubbled" side losing political power.

Yes. The current power-holders look like champions to themselves and nuts to everyone else, and that may well cost them political power. But, just as conservatives gleefully declare the death of climate change catastrophism every time a non-catatrophist wins office, only to seem puzzled when that agenda comes back full steam afterwards, so it will be the same with MAGA.

This is so because each bubble-dwelling faction is animated by anti-individualist, anti-freedom philosophical ideas that, while not based in reality, do provide them with a moral compass that they will not discard as easily as they can lose an election.

The full extent of the woke left's soul searching concerned how to return to power, not whether its animating ideas had anything to do with reality. That, too, will be the full extent of hard-core MAGA's.

It is interesting to consider that normal voters, too, may be in a bubble. Our country has enjoyed relative economic and political freedom for so long that most people take those things for granted. Our education system has, similarly, done a worse job each generation in teaching the ideas that made liberty possible or preparing minds to understand them by cultivating independent, active thinking.

Freedom does not last long if there is no faction that actively supports it. That's the reality normies don't seem to appreciate.

As to how we look to others? My own experience with both wokescold and MAGA relatives tells me that, as individuals, we look like members of the opposite "extreme" (read: collectivist) faction than that of the person we are speaking to at the moment. As a collective, I would guess that we are taken for marks, whose votes are there for the taking.

The horseshoe is an illusion. The arrow points to freedom.

History tells us that the best way to stop being treated like chumps and advance the cause of liberty is to educate oneself and others, and make it clear that one's political allegiance is up for grabs and has to be earned.

-- CAV

California's Billionaire-Drain

California's Proposition 40, a one-time wealth tax of resident billionaires is on the ballot. Economists and conservative media outlets argue, correctly that this is a terrible idea from the standpoint of the government increasing its tax revenue.

(We'll set aside our disappointment that none express any degree of moral outrage at this brazen violation of individual rights.)

Megan McArdle takes this line of argument further, considering what dueling economists are saying about the potential impact of such a measure -- and assuming in order to make their cases.

In addition to questioning assumptions about what the billionaires might do in response to such a measure, she considers what this "group of the world's most mobile people" are doing:

Several California billionaires have already announced their departures, including Peter Thiel and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. [Wealth tax proponent Gabriel] Zucman's paper notes that if some of the most prominent tech barons succeed in fleeing, revenue estimates fall to $89 billion, but then argues that there are many small-fry billionaires who escape Forbes's wealth rankings but still have to pay the tax. Adding them back in raises revenue to $115 billion.

This assumes the undetected small fry haven't done their best to exit, but why would we assume that? Why should we believe that those who loudly announced they were shifting their residency before the year began were the only people who fled ahead of the SEIU initiative?

Mike Solana, the chief marketing officer at Founders Fund (where Thiel is a partner) and founder of tech site Pirate Wires, reported speaking with 20 billionaires who would be affected by the wealth tax. They comprise about 10 percent of the state's known billionaires. All 20, including some Democrats, said they were making exit plans; three said they'd already left. You can dismiss Solana as a Thiel acolyte, but I've heard from others in those circles that most of the state's billionaires are planning their departure, if they haven't already left. [bold added]

McArdle then notes that economists aren't the only people on earth capable of making assumptions:

They probably assume that if the tax succeeds, progressives will come back for an encore. And if it fails, they'll try, try again. Those seem like sound assumptions -- sounder, in fact, than the assumption that Californians can grab 5 percent of everything the billionaires have, and the billionaires will just have to sit there and let them take it.

It is interesting to consider the idea that California's nasty threat to retroactively confiscate so much money might already be backfiring.

-- CAV

'Shy Republicans' -- but the Other Way Around?

A Daily Mail piece about the Talarico-Paxton senatorial race in Texas speaks of "shy Republicans," a term I've heard more than once before, going way back to Dubya in 2004.

The term has since been reapplied to Trump supporters, and is popping up in news media again.

This time, however, with the unpopularity of the corrupt candidate Trump chose to replace the incumbent John Cornyn, the term is being used for Republican voters who plan to vote against their party's candidate. There is speculation about whether polls are underestimating the number of Republicans who plan to vote for Talarico, but are averse to admitting as much in public:

Celebrated attorney Thomas J Henry, who [once] gave $600,000 to a pro-Paxton PAC, on Wednesday night published a video on social media endorsing Talarico. He said in the clip, which received 24,000 likes in under 24 hours, that he had met with Talarico and discussed issues at length, finding him to be 'balanced, straightforward and honest.'

'I think there are going to be many, many people that are Republicans that are going to vote for Talarico,' Henry told the Daily Mail. 'And I can tell you, as a lawyer, I have dealt with many people that are on juries that are very conservative, and people that you'd think would be very liberal, and I've seen them make decisions based on certain circumstances that are not consistent with what you think they would be based on a label.

'So I think we have to give people credit for making up their own mind.'

Will it be enough to get Talarico over the line, making him the first Democrat to represent Texas in the nation's capital in 33 years?

I am not sure so many Republicans who vote for Talarico will share Henry's enthusiasm for Talarico so much as be appalled at what an atrocious character and record Paxton has, but the note about people exercising their own judgement in private stands.

As for the reluctance, I think the below might be a fair indication of the tribalist pressure many such people will feel:

His wife warned him [lifelong Republican James Edge] against it, cautioning that they would lose friends. Indeed, they have: Some now shun him in the streets. So conservative is his Brazos County home that, after he made his declaration, the local radio station invited him on air -- and then received a barrage of hate mail.

'It was as if an earthquake shifted in my world, in the area around my home,' he told the Daily Mail. 'I would think it would be relatively uninteresting, what my position would be on this. I am a well-known Republican, and a city councilor, but our city is fairly small - it's only 100,000 people.

'The attention that this has drawn has been fascinating. I have heard from countless people: individuals that are currently elected Republicans in Brazos County; staffers throughout the state of Texas that work for Republican officeholders. And they have said, "Thank you, I agree with you 100 percent. I'm with you, and I feel the same way. I can't vote for Ken Paxton."'

'But virtually none of them have been willing to do it publicly. And I fully understand that, because of the blowback that I have experienced, which has been unlike anything I really expected.'

I once lived in Texas, but am not as familiar with the electoral math there as I am with Mississippi's: I'm not sure how much crossing over Talarico would need to win. But the Daily Mail claims the race is "neck-and-neck" and even Republican voters who simply stay home or abstain in the Paxton race will help Talarico's effort.

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "The Midterm Elections: Trump's Abettors Have to Be Removed," by Peter Schwartz (Peter Schwartz):

Trump did not like how the 2020 election turned out, and tried to forcibly nullify it. What will he do about the next election whose results he does not like? He has said that his biggest regret about the 2020 election is his failure to send the National Guard to seize the voting machines. Will he rectify that failure in response to the upcoming midterm elections? Or the 2028 elections? We can't know -- but we do know that the Republicans will not defy him.

Republicans are now in thrall to Trump. They make possible his dismissal of legal constraints. The only way to neutralize Trump, then, is through a Congress controlled by Democrats. Yes, even if they are "democratic socialists." A president aided in his refusal to acknowledge the rule of law by an acquiescent Congress, is a far greater threat than legislators who want to enact socialized medicine or a ban on gasoline-powered cars.

1210 words/4 minutes

2. "The Hazard of 'The Government Knows Best'," by Jaana Woiceshyn (How to Be Profitable and Moral):

[H]uman flourishing does not mean bare economic survival and equal struggle for all. The condition of flourishing is that people are able to depend on their basic tool of survival, reason. They must be free to think, engage in any productive activity, and trade with others of their choosing, to survive and enjoy life. Thinking, producing, and trading requires freedom to choose one's work, to keep the proceedings from it and to prosper accordingly.

By limiting or abolishing that freedom -- through confiscation of property and "redistributing" it to others, trough taxation, welfare programs, and foreign aid, or through restricting trade through regulations -- a statist government undermines individuals' freedom to pursue their values and thereby their flourishing.

900 words/3 minutes

3. "'Effective Altruism' Produced the Doomers," by Harry Binswanger (Value for Value):

In today's Wall Street Journal, "The Weekend Interview" is "Why Did Technologists Become Doomers?"

It's not just the slant of the headline that's good. The interviewee, Zack Korman, is astonishing -- not just in being on the right side, not just in supplying important information about the risks of AI, but in actually showing that what caused the hysteria is a philosophy! And guess which philosophy: "effective altruism"!

920 words/3 minutes

4. "How I Solved My Writing Problems," by Jean Moroney (Thinking Directions):

In trying to follow their process, I had dropped my own judgment of whether the thing hung together logically. I was judging it based on whether I was following their procedure, not on whether it made sense to me. This is the problem that arises from focusing on rules instead of reality. In hindsight, my 15-step process, though it has a lot of merit and brings a lot of clarity, also encouraged a rule-focused approach to writing.

This was my first glimmer into the fundamental problem that has distorted my process for years.

At about the same time, I heard Peter Schwartz give a condensed overview of the writing process he taught me many years ago, and on which my writing process was based. (This was at last year's Randsday Weekend Conference, at which we'll both be speaking again in 2027.)

This time I heard him say, "You write because you have a message you want to communicate."

This sounds obvious, but it hit me like a ton of bricks.

1870 words/6 minutes

-- CAV

When Favor Sharks Circle

Dear Abby addresses a huge, boundary-crossing ask from a favor-shark. In this case, a woman's brother-in-law, who has "selflessly" performed favors for her over the years, has become angry with her because she won't accept an "offer" to become a nanny three days a week to his newborn baby.

Abby's response is pretty good:

You are not "crazy," so don't feel guilty for refusing to allow your sister and brother-in-law to push you into something with which you are not comfortable. That they would expect you to become their babysitter without first discussing it with your partner (legal or not) is somewhere between sneaky and presumptuous.

You say your relationship with your twin and her husband is "somewhat strained." Well, it appears to be that way because you sense a lack of respect from them. That is the issue you should straighten out with her. As for her hubby, he needs to understand that: 1. You are happy working with your father in the business, and 2. Removing garbage, clearing snow and dealing with mechanical issues are not remotely equivalent to devoting three days every week to taking care of a baby. [bold added]

I have been presented with similar outlandish proposals more times than you might believe in my life, including someone hoping to foist a dog on me, and a proposal made to me in all seriousness that I let a troubled young man move into my home with my young children. (Neither my "being a mentor" nor the "free child 'care'" sweetened that second deal for me.)

In such cases, including the one at Dear Abby, the proposer -- favor-shark or not -- seems simultaneously (1) oblivious to how big an ask the "favor" is to the person it is being asked of, (2) inordinately focused on the fact that the proposed recipients are "needy", and yet also (3) engaged in magical thinking as to how the proposed arrangement will work out in real life.

(I suspect that this is just another example of altruism functioning as a mental kill switch. Why should someone who possesses something of value factor in to how it is used? How could something so "noble" as a human sacrifice fail to make everything magically work out?)

It's happened enough that I eventually came up with a succinct answer that I think even many people who have not given much thought to the underlying philosophical issues can understand: That is the kind of commitment I owe only to someone I have brought into the world or married. (And yes, that goes for adopting a dog!)

Abby is right that the favors being sharked aren't the equivalent to the "repayment" being demanded, but the issue is deeper than that. As Ayn Rand put it:

Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None -- except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don't, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs. [bold added]

The favor-sharking is an attempt to pretend that the mark has entered a voluntary relationship when that is not the case, and the earlier link about that practice has a couple of suggestions about how to deal with it.

-- CAV

Not a Good Look for Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I once regarded as an interesting, if not creditable Republican politician for the future, has probably just blown the Ohio gubernatorial race and -- aside from any future appointments by Trump -- torpedoed his political future once and for all.

A new attack ad features the estranged mother of Democratic candidate for Ohio governor Amy Acton calling her a "liar" and defending her GOP opponent Vivek Ramaswamy. Acton's campaign and her brother denounced the ad as a "despicable low."

Acton's mother, Donna Arthur, whose husband was accused of raping Acton when she was a child, says in the spot, "It's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy was a serious problem. She is a liar; she lies about her past."

...

[Acton's brother] said that after their stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged, he and Acton were removed from the Arthurs' custody and lived with their father.

"Our birth mother stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died," Stearns said. "This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core -- a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants." [bold added]

The couple fled Ohio for good when Arthur was on bail, so he never faced charges.

This episode reminds me of Clayton Williams's election-costing remark in the 1990 Texas gubernatorial race, in which he crowned a series of gaffes with a "joke" likening rape to the weather. Williams had been leading in the polls. Unlike Williams then, Ramaswamy, was already behind.

I am old enough to remember when Republicans often said that character matters in an elected official, and I agree. Even if, for the sake of argument, Acton were a "serial fabulist," as the Ramaswamy campaign insists, this was obviously not the way to address the issue if indeed there was a good one. Furthermore, if the attack was not desperate and disgusting, it certainly makes Ramaswamy look that way.

That is a bad look, and will fail to help Ramaswamy establish himself as different from the corrupt dwellers of the moral sewer that is MAGA.

I have not followed the Ohio race at all, but if Williams lost Texas with his remark, I think it will be a miracle if Ramaswamy wins Ohio now.

-- CAV

Another Warnock in Mississippi?

In the New York Times, E.J. Dionne asks, "Could Mississippi Elect Its First Black Senator Since Reconstruction?"

While Scott Colom, the candidate in question, is not a minister, the piece notes that he is quite religious, and he reminds me a bit of Raphael Warnock (D-GA), and James Talarico -- who is polling ahead of the charisma-challenged, corrupt James Paxton, whom Trump hand-picked to get rid of the quite electable incumbent, John Cornyn.

Donald Trump, aided by the spinelessness of a party that should have at least tried to keep him under control, has made what might have been unthinkable only a few years ago into a distinct possibility.

This he has achieved by (1) adopting unpopular and foolish economic policies that have hit Americans in the wallet; and (2) pandering to racists on top of demanding state legislators gerrymander their voting districts to eliminate Democratic seats.

The former will fail to motivate fiscal conservatives -- and the latter will strongly motivate traditionally Democratic constituencies -- to show up to vote.

This is doubly bad news for Republicans in Mississippi.

First, here's a taste of the position the incumbent finds herself in:

They form the core of his critique of Ms. Hyde-Smith, whom he sometimes refers to as "Cindy High Prices." With inflation a central issue everywhere, she gave him an unexpected opening when a local television interviewer asked her about the rising price of beef. She replied, "You know you have so many proteins to choose from." [bold added]

This is even less inspiring than Your daughter doesn't need 30 dolls for Christmas, coming as it does from the political party that once owned the economy as an issue.

Second, the non-Republican elephant in the room in Mississippi, demographics, can easily kick in to make the upset happen:

There is hard math behind Mr. Colom's thinking. Mississippi Democrats start with a strong base in the Black community, which represents 37 percent of the population, the largest share of any state. The longstanding rule of thumb, as Mr. Colom's pollster Margie Omero told me, is that a Democrat can win by securing high turnout among Black voters and roughly a quarter of the white vote. [bold added]

To this native Mississippian, the piece makes interesting reading, although Dionne gets one thing partly wrong:

Senator Warnock, first elected in a dramatic December runoff after President Joe Biden's 2020 victory, alluded to the not-so-behind-the-scenes battle over whether national Democrats should add Mississippi to the growing list of states in which they're investing. "Believe me when I say Mississippi has the ingredients of our win in Georgia, and then some," he said. "I'm also pushing the Democratic Party to invest more in the South. I think the Democratic Party fails to invest in the South at its own peril."

If by invest, he means, fund candidates, he's correct to cite Warnock. If he also means, send national figures there or play up progressive messaging, he's wrong. Voters in Mississippi are more socially conservative (and religious) in general, and this includes blacks. If national Democrats come in sounding like wokescolds, they will alienate many of these voters for various reasons.

It's already an uphill battle for Colom: If there is any doubt that he is anything other than a traditional Democrat, he will lose.

-- CAV